onna's scratches and scribbles

Only a little more than 200 words today.

Got 645 words done today, and the first draft is now completed. Now it in the hands of betareader #1, rat, to catch things I have missed because I am too close to it.

Next, to betareader #2, my grammar goddess, if she's not too busy.

Then, it's off to other betareaders for various things.

A little over 400 words today. Shiyuu has suddenly decided to open his mouth and babble, ugh. It's cute babble, but babble nonetheless.

Sent a bitch to DeviantArt today:


I signed up here, not to post artwork but to try and make sure my artwork was not being stolen. This place is filled with stolen work and I refuse to post my work here because of the blatant art theft that runs rampant here.

I do not think I should have to pay for a subscription to this place just to check to see if I have been a victim of art theft. I should be able to search for any images linked to Gravitation and see if anyone has stolen my drawings and oekaki and I should be able to do this without having to pay for that privilege.

*grumble grumble*

No bookstore in the area has Gravitation 7 or DNAngel 3 yet.

Major bummer.

Wrote 400 words yesterday.

Wrote over 700 words today.

I really hope I can get this fic done this week... it keeps GROWING!!!!

400 words written today.

*blinkblink*

I wrote 100 words at lunch today...

*blink*

I wrote 400 words today...

At lunch yesterday I got all the notes for a quickie ficlet out of the notebook and into the manuscript.

Today at lunch I worked on it a little bit.

I am crossing my fingers, hoping I don't get into too much detail, which will make this little ficlet turn into a monster.

Decided to redo the slicing of "Comfort and Joy" for a few reasons.

I decided I wanted to show both the pencil drawing and the cg enhanced picture. Actually, if memory serves me correctly, no one has actually seen the pencil drawing without the cg.

To make sure they looked the same I had to work on the contrast of the pencil drawing so it somewhat matched the higher contrast of the coloured piece. Back then I was still having major problems with contrast.

I copied the pencil drawing and pasted it into a new layer, on top of the coloured version. That way I had both sliced at the same time, same way.

I deleted all the old slices. added new guides, then sliced again.

I saved each pic as a separate file so the final naming convention would come out correctly when I did the optimization and sent them to the website folder. It's another thing I have set up; every image going on the website has a unique number and I am trying to keep those numbers in the order of image completion. I have a few out of sequence but I now have pending folders waiting for the latest and I will be doing a different naming convention for all my fic-related artwork. I just have to decide what it will be.

After I sliced it and sent the new file/image folder to the website folder, I decided to get rid of the faded pencil 'signature' in the top left corner of the coloured piece. After I cleaned that up I resent the four slices that had held the 'smudge' to that image folder.

When I get "Comfort and Joy" posted tomorrow I will have all my 2003 drawings not related to any of my fics or role-play online. Whoo ha.

Next on the agenda is getting the six Liquid Rodent pics posted. I need to finish up the second draft of the synopsis and get it back to the other players to see if everything looks right. I am trying to determine if I want the viewer to go through the synopsis prior to getting to the picture links or have the synopsis on a separate page and it can be clicked if the viewer wants to read about it. In this case, I am feeling it is important for the storyline to be read prior to seeing the images. I will have to think about it.

Stupid me.

I stayed too late (after 4am) and I got up too early (10am).  Headache is probably a combination of sleep-deprivation and jaw-clenching.

Updated website with just two oekaki. I will probably post another Gravi drawing later this week.  I worked on some image slicing last night to try and get the old pieces out there.  It's kinda stupid to only have thumbnails posted on a blog/lj.

Finished up two more 'lyric' wallpapers and sent them out.  They will never be posted anywhere because I am using original Gravi art and screencaps.  I do have a few wallpapers with my own artwork in the works, mostly as an exercise for me.

I have a hell of a lot to do...

DRAWINGS NEEDING TO BE POSTED ON WEBSITE

Related story Pics

 
• Pics belonging to "the fic that will not end"    
  • Cover Art
  • Relaxing Hug - the pic that inspired the fic
  • Loving Gaze
  • Cheshire Cat Grin
  • Eiri Snuggles into Shiyuu
  • Therapy Talk
  • Backstage after the Tokyo Bay Music Festival
  • Shelter
 
• Pic for Serenade

Solo Images

• Wistful Shiyuu

Pics for Couples Section

• Serious Contemplation
• Comfort and Joy
• Again?!
• Surprise!
• Afterglow
• Snow Lick
• Portraits
• GQ-pending
• Candlelight at Midnight
• Welcome Home II
• Snuggle 4

X-Over Pics

• The Trouble with Tribbles, Gravitation-Style

Liquid Rodent Pics

• Auto-Timer Capture
• Tropical Call
• Waiting for the Sunrise
• Covert Squeeze
• Maitai
• A Nap in a Lap

I seem to now have a web muse, who has been having me create a few wallpapers using Maki Murakami's artwork and lyrics from songs I think are appropriate for the charas. I have shipped them off to people I think may enjoy one, the other or both.

I don't know the name or gender of the muse yet. I don't know if it is Evan in disguise.


I hadn't considered I would have a web muse. That part of my creativity seemed to be standard equipment.

Evan has backed off, because I am not very inspired at the moment.

I think Evan has either put on a different hat or I have a new muse for web design and other web stuff, because working to get all my prior and latest drawings on the website seems to be the thrust I am feeling at the moment.

Too bad my main computer has decided to FUCK UP again.

Don't know when I will be back here.

Okay, this one is from the brain, so it's not as dynamic as the last one. It's another snuggle drawing, this time with Eiri's incredibly messy hair being almost a separate live creature on top of his head. I actually had to erase about an inch off the top because it was just so poofy.

I guess the tribbles have decided to breed in the mess on Eiri's head...

Here's the latest. Reference was a male/female photo illustrating an article in a 2000 Playboy.

I pretty much used an F pencil throughout the whole thing, except for an H2 for S's eyelashes and hair fringe around his face and an H8 for the thin line details of E's hair.

The only cg I did was to the three shirts. I considered putting a wall pattern behind them but then I decided to let the viewer decide exactly where they are, leaning against a wall, standing in the middle of somewhere, lying in bed.

Since the pose reminded me a little of my drawing, "Welcome Home" from last year, I decided to use the same general kind of hair treatment for E for this one. Plus, this drawing seemed to the next step of that drawing so I called it "Welcome Home 2 - I missed you...", even though I did not use the same pattern fills for the shirts.

And yes, the boys are muscular again. I don't see either of them as girlie, not even S. They are healthy young men with muscular tone and mass.

I picked up one of the sketchpads lying under the pile of Japanese flashcards last Tuesday evening. Why I did not pick it up last week when I had the time is beyond me. Anyway, I found a drawing I was working on back in April 2003. It is part of the Liquid Rodent series and it looked almost completed, just needing a little definition to the lounge chair and some shading on a rear-end. We are talking about just a few little lines here and there, a few smudges, and it would be done. Why I did not finish it before now? I have utterly no clue.

So...

That night I added the chair definition and for some reason, a beach towel, shaded the rear-end and the side of the person's body and did a few little shading touchups and extra line erases. I declared it completed and signed/dated it, using both the old date and the new date. It is like a 'drawing' dated and a 'it's done' date.

In the same sketchpad, I found the inked line drawing of the Gravi boys in a blatantly sexual position I did last year. The arms and legs are SO elongated, probably anime correct (which was part of that particular exercise as I recall), but the limbs look weird to me. I see the places I need to touch up with white ink and after I do that, I will probably declare it complete. It will need to have a lot of cg-ed background work done to it, along with either greyscale or coloured cel shading.

At the beginning of the month I found another drawing of the Liquid Rodent series in my small sketchbook, changed the mouth slightly and also declared it completed, but did not sign/date it.

So now I am at this strange place.

None of these three drawings are my current style. The majority of the drawing was executed April and May 2003, over a year ago. My style has VASTLY changed since then. I don't want people to think I did these recently because the styles are so different than what I do now.

So, how do you date something like this - old shit that was 99% completed but abandoned at one point for reasons unknown (but probably boredom or frustration) and with just a few florishes they are completed?

I think what I am going to do is put both a guessed dated as to when each was almost completed, the date I signed off on the image, and a third date for when I did the cg work, since all three images will have cg. The two Liquid Rodent pics will have photos used as the backgrounds, like the rest of the series. The inked piece will have some kind of 'environment' added to it, and it may turn into a Liquid Rodent piece or it may not. It just depends on what Evan throws at me at the time.

And about the sketchbooks themselves...

I really prefer a sketchbook with a spiral binder because the kind that are padded (like a notepad) have a tendency to lose pages when you start pulling them out randomly through the sketchbook. When I tear one drawing out, I usually take one to three pieces of blank paper with me. I don't draw on the next page of any sketchbook anyway. I skip two or three pages to begin something new. That way, I have protective pages between working pieces if something does develop.

Since some of the old drawings have been in these books, I have also noticed the paper in these books are of a better quality than the brand that makes the spiral-bound sketchbooks. Sure, some of the spots are still there, but it is not so prevalent on almost every single page. And the paper is more smooth as well. I am going to have to see if the brand name who makes the padded books also make spiral books.

First, I need to fill up the other books. So, now I am doing 'dirt' sketches on the pages that have spots all over, just sketching ideas or trying some new poses, etc., hoping the studies do not morph into a real drawing. If something DOES show up, I will try to trace it off onto better paper.

So, about those OLD drawings in the sketchbooks (over a year old), I decided to sign off on them and finish them off with cg. The two images are part of a series inspired by an alternate universe role-play where E is a chef and S is a waiter at a bistro/bar Talon and I run. In this universe, based on the Dragonball Z universe, the boys are more buff and muscular, but still relatively slim. At one point, I sent the boys to a tropical pleasure planet I co-own, to celebrate their birthdays, hence the tropical theme to the pics. They have a nice little island all to themselves so they can run around in the buff without having to worry about bumping into other people. All the drawings' backgrounds are from photos I took in Hawaii and/or California. When I finally get the scenario written up and details confirmed with the rp-ers (it's been over a year since we did this rp!) I will be posting the six images on my website. At that time I will also enter powergoddess's contest.

Creative vacation final count:

Writing:

• Nothing done/completed


• at least eight stories in-progress

Art:

• three (3) oekaki completed


• drawing "GQ"
  
  
  
  • lineart completed
  
  
  • cg tone work in-progress
  
  
  • cg colour work being considered
  
  
  
  


• drawing "unnamed snuggle pic"
  
  
  
  • pencil work currently abandoned because it is ugly and not the charas
  
  
  
  


• drawing "Candlelight at Midnight"
  
  
  
  • pencil piece completed
  
  
  • cg coloured piece completed
  
  
  
  


• drawing "Welcome Home II"
  
  
  
  • pencil work in-progress
  
  
  
  


• drawing "Wistful Shiyuu"
  
  
  
  • pencil piece completed
  
  
  • cg screentones completed
  
  
  
  


• drawing "unnamed snuggle pic"
  
  
  
  • pencil work in-progress
  
  
  
  


• drawing "was to be Eiri"
  
  
  
  • pencil work currently abandoned - it's not Eiri - some other bishie is coming through and the muse has not told me who exactly it is yet
  
  
  
  


• drawing "The Trouble with Tribbles, Gravitation-Style"
  
  
  
  • lineart completed
  
  
  • cg colour work completed
  
  
  
  

Paper Rant

I have all these 100-page 9x12 sketchbooks floating around the house, at least four or five.

The one I have been using lately has the usual visible paper flaws, little dots of 'dark' within the paper fibers. I am finding these annoying now because I have to either work around them or take them out digitally. The original drawing is flawed permanently because of the flecks. I am actually picking the piece of paper I am beginning a drawing on now.

Sketch paper is a lower quality, so sometimes when I am using a stump or pencil I hit a section in the paper where the texture is a little different than the majority of the page. This can cause the graphite to show up differently, which can be irritating when I am working on detail work. Sometimes tiny indentations are in the paper, invisible until a pencil touches it. Then it puts a black dot right where I don't want it, and even a narrowed tip of a kneaded eraser cannot lift the graphite out of the dimple.

I have been working on a drawing since 6/26. I am using a small resource photo from a 2000 Playboy. The muse is wanting me to build this one up slowly for some reason, layering shade upon shade with just an F pencil to build darker sections, working slowly with the skin shading, constantly changing line angles slightly to get the drawing just right. The thing is on sketch paper and it has already been accidentally bent in two places and I have run into numerous paper flaws making the pencil show in ways different than intended. I can only dot the sections with the kneaded eraser so many times and hope the colour tone of the shading remains relatively intact.

The problem is, I never know if a drawing is just a sketch or something more 'important', so I cannot predict what deserves to be done in the lone drawing paper book. Drawing paper is thicker, smoother and twice as expensive for half as many pages. The faux-Scottish thriftiness in me balks at the price, and the fact lots of sketches just don't ever see the light of day and they belong on the cheaper paper. Blowing drawing paper on crap makes me cringe. Plus, I have all these large sketch pads and the Depression thriftiness hammered into me by my mother says I need to use these up before buying more. And I no longer have much of a disposable income, so I really cannot just pitch these and start again.

I could easily use the pads for pure inkwork, but that's a hell of a lot of inkwork!

Anyway, time to stop ranting about paper. rat wants to take me on another driving adventure so drawing time will be taken away from me today, my last day of my creative vacation.

*sigh*

*blink*

"Over Breakfast" is a year old today...

This is what occupied my time while I was cursing my computer yesterday.

A lot of people have seen me call Shiyuuichi a pink tribble in comments. Well, it struck me suddenly I should draw go ahead and draw it. So here is Shiyuu as the pink tribble, a very happy and toothy tribble, bonding with his tribble choice, the reluctant Klingon, Eiri.

As you recall, tribbles come in pink, yellow, tan and other colours, so as an extra, I had to add a little yellow and very pissed off Tohma tribble in the background.

I had hoped I would have a story completed this week.

I am almost feeling guilty. Grunt hasn't been able to a word in edge-wise this creative vacation and I only have a few days left. Even rat made a comment about it yesterday.

It's not like I don't have words flinging around in my brain - it's just that Evan has a vise-like control at the moment and is not letting go for any reason.

I was looking at a sketched piece earlier this morning, not really motivated, then I picked up the stump and started shading it. I had to force myself away so I could get something to eat and to check email, etc.

I need to get back to it now.

It's been a productive vacation.

This is my very first single chara Gravitation pic. It probably surprises folks I did not draw my favorite grumpy blond novelist. It is all because of a little photo I saw in rat's 1999 Playboy Hardbodies mag - I saw it, noticed the tank top, and knew I had to draw my favorite pink tribble.

He is a little wistful, isn't he?

In the large version he does not look like he has boobs...

Large version to the usual suspects later.